Assignment - Afghan Dragon

by Edward S. Aarons

  “Yes. East, West, I could get away from it all. I am sick to my soul of it. I am frightened by it. In our business, dear Cajun, once the fear gets in your blood, it is like cancer, eh? It weakens you and you die. I want the dragon. I need it. I must have it. I wish to buy it from you. Please, please accommodate me. I am desperate.”

  She did not look or sound very desperate. But perhaps she was telling the truth—partially—about herself. She had within her the air of a predator that Durell had seen before in men and women involved in his business. It would always be Freyda first, with her; and the devil take the hindmost. He watched her move, her figure rich and magnificent behind the thin gray towel. Her legs were long and full-fleshed, her buttocks plump, her waist very narrow; she held the towel so that her arm pushed her provocative breasts up to where they were deliberately revealed, exhibiting their own interest in him.

  The cinema lights in the window behind her blinked on and off. Obviously, she could not be carrying a concealed weapon. Not the usual type, he thought wryly. But she could have planted a gun, a bomb, a knife, somewhere in the room, in the time she had been alone in here. He wondered if she had done something to Anya, removing her forcibly somewhere else, in order to take her place. But the room did not reflect any violence, only the sadness of past clientele. He listened to the muffled noises from the other rooms in the hotel, and considered exits and entrances—the narrow corridor, the rickety wooden steps in the rear, the stairway that came up over the restaurant from the street lobby.

  Freyda said impatiently, “Are you listening to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You do not look at me very much.”

  “I see you,” Durell said.

  “Do you not like what you see?”

  “Yes.”

  “Listen,” she said imperatively. “How long have you been in this business, Cajun? I’ve heard so much about you before this—oh, yes, we have our dossiers on you, too. I have always wondered if you were like the talented and dangerous man described in the read-outs. And you turn out to be more so.” She made her voice softer. “Always, although I was married to a poor excuse of a husband, I wondered how I would feel and what I would do, if I met a man like you.”

  “You’re being obvious, Freyda,” he said. He looked at the outline of her body through the thin towel. “In more ways than one.”

  “What would it take to buy the dragon from you?” she whispered. And then she came closer. “How much money?”

  “Not enough in the world,” he said. “And I don’t have it, anyway.”

  “But you know where the dragon is,” she insisted.

  “Maybe,” he admitted. “Maybe I do, now.”

  “Would a new world of safety and freedom—and me?—be attractive to you, then? Surely you are tired of hunting and being hunted. One never grows old in this business. One dies, suddenly, usually very badly. There is no retirement for people like you and me. Unless we escape, somehow. Into anonymity, yes? With money. Lots of money. New names, new identity, new papers. And then the freedom to be one’s true self, without constant fear of every shadow.”

  Now she was within touching distance of him, and he scented her perfume, and knew she had been liberal with it, all over that magnificent body. She looked sidelong at the bed. “We are safe here, for the moment. It is quiet here. I was lucky, just lucky, to see Anya leaving this hotel as I was passing by. That is how I found you. I was discreet coming up here. No one, certainly not Mr. Chou, knows I am here with you.”

  She put her arms up and locked her hands behind his neck. He did not like it. She could easily develop it into a paralyzing, spine-breaking grip. She was big enough and strong enough. The towel fell to the floor in a heap between them. Her breasts pressed against his chest, firm and goddesslike. He laughed softly, moved forward, kissed her. She changed at once, sensing a victory, and pulled him toward the bed. Her mouth was anxious, eager, ripe and demanding. When they were up against the bed, he murmured softly against her open mouth, “To hell with you, Freyda.”

  Her anger flashed like an eruptive volcano. She was as strong as he had suspected, and more. Her training was good. She tried to pull his head forward, to smash his face against the top of her head, but he was ready for her, and dropped out of her locked hands behind his neck, got his shoulder into her ribs, and heaved her backward upon the sagging bed. She made a small sound of dismay, bounced, her legs flying up to kick him low in the belly, missing her major target. Her thick blond hair came awry out of its neat, tight coils. Naked, she looked up at him with a face darkened by fury.

  “Oh, you bastard—”

  “Take it easy, Freyda. It’s just no deal.”

  “I could have turned you over to Chou—”

  “Perhaps you should have.”

  He was right about her having stashed a weapon in the little hotel room. Her hand slid under the dingy pillow and came up with a six-inch blade, razor-sharp, honed to a point as thin as a needle. She drove it at him and he slid aside, caught for her wrist, missed, felt a thin hissing pain in his upper arm, then captured her wrist and twisted, came down with all his weight upon her. She was all woman, all fury, all murder. She thrust upward under him, trying to free her knife hand, and he came down harder, felt her teeth sink into the side of his neck. He hit her with his left fist, hit her again as she pulled up a knee into his groin. She yelped, groaned, slid aside, yielding the knife, and fell off the bed on the opposite side. He saw the flash of her long, firm thighs and hips and buttocks as she sprawled on the dusty floor. Her long blond hair flew wildly. He caught at a heavy braid, wrapped it around his hand, and tugged her head back hard. She got to her knees, her strength that of a man’s, her efforts practiced and expert. Durell put a foot against her quivering buttocks and shoved hard. She sprawled forward with a cry of outrage.

  Smoothly, he dropped a knee on her back and used his hand on the nape of her neck to press her face against the grimy little rug. She heaved and struggled, her naked body writhing. He pressed his weight down harder until she suddenly groaned and began cursing softly in German.

  “Now we’ll have the truth,” he said softly.

  “Oh, you are cruel—!”

  “The truth,” he repeated.

  “I have told you all—more than I ever told anyone else—”

  “But not enough,” he said.

  “Please—let me up.”

  He pressed down harder. She groaned again, tried to reach back and claw up his flexed knee that pressed into the firm flesh of her rump.

  “Freyda, be very careful. Be very quiet. It won’t do either of us any good if you raise an alarm and get the police up here. The local jail isn’t any bed of roses.”

  “Yes, yes . . .” she gasped. “Let me at least turn over. My breasts hurt—they are crushed on the floor—”

  He released his weight carefully and she rolled over on one ample hip, then onto her back. Her long legs came up slowly on either side of him. Her eyes were blind with fury. There were red splotches on her cheek where he had forced her face into the rough, duty rug. Her chest heaved, her breasts moving upward. He forced himself to pay no attention.

  He said quietly, “You have good reason for deserting your husband and Mr. Chou. You know how dangerous that can be, however. The Black House would never let you live a single day, a single hour, with any peace of mind.” His voice was low and persuasive. “You know how it is in our business. You’re an intelligent woman.

  What you told me about wanting to pull out of the business, with the dragon, and live in South America, was all lies. You have other reasons.”

  “No, no,” she whispered. “I swear it—”

  She tried to wrap her long legs around him as he straddled her. Durell dropped a forearm across her throat and pressed his weight down hard again. She couldn’t breathe. Her face turned purple, ugly with hatred and terror. When her eyes started to roll, he released his weight on her windpipe. She drew her breath in with a long, rasping, rattly his
s. He waited until some of the purple color faded.

  “Everybody is afraid of the Black House people,” he said gently, looking down at the big woman. “Anybody with any sense, that is. So I figure you have a bigger fear, something you’re more afraid of than Peking’s vengeance if you betray them. What is it, Freyda?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  He applied pressure again. His face was blank, without expression, as he hurt her. This time her ripe body flopped, bucked, and bounced under him, between his legs. It took her longer to recover, when he at last relented.

  “Well?”

  “My sister—”

  “Who?”

  “Wilma Strelsky. Madame Strelsky. The mistress of General Chan Wei-Wu.”

  “In Peking?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes. She is in Peking. She wants a visa to Hong Kong, official papers, so she can escape and come home. It is not given to her. General Chan keeps her there, in the city, in Peking, just as a prisoner for his pleasure. He will not release her.”

  “We’re talking about the same General Chan who sent the Chinese team—you and your husband and I suppose others—in here for the dragon?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. The man who wants war. The man everyone on the Committee is so terribly afraid of. Except for the Deputy Chairman. He stands out. The Deputy Chairman is General Chan’s enemy. It is no secret. The Deputy Chairman understands the folly of nuclear war.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “My sister and I—Wilma and I—we have secret correspondence. It is in a childhood code. It is so simple, so obvious, it is not suspected. She writes to me.”

  “And what does she write that makes you want to double-cross the Chinese—General Chan’s—team?” “Wilma is part of a plot. The Deputy Chairman is using her, too. He has offered her a release from China, an escape from General Chan’s attentions and imprisonment. She does not want to be Chan’s mistress forever, or until she is old and then discarded and made to work in the fields, or in some factory commune making bicycle parts. She is truly a prisoner there, you see—unofficial, uncounted, with no one to speak for her or even aware of her. And only the Deputy Chairman can save her.”

  “How?” Durell asked harshly.

  “I do not know the politics of the inner ruling circles in Peking, but—”

  She was reluctant to go on. He waited, patient and watchful, his blue eyes very dark. He wondered about Wilma’s existence in the unlikely lovenest in distant Peking. Frey da’s breath was still ragged.

  “They will kill General Chan Wei-Wu,” Freyda went on slowly. “Wilma is part of the plan. She will keep Chan with her, in her apartment, so Chan’s personal guards can be quietly eliminated, and then they will come in and kill Chan. It is the Deputy Chairman’s idea. This new Deputy is against using the dragon as an excuse for war. He is sensible, secretly a scholar in the old tradition, Wilma says. He is a great admirer of the ancient scholar-artist, Tung Ch’i-ch’ang. The Deputy is a subtle man. It will look like suicide, on the part of the General. Wilma will be hurried out of the country and given to Hong Kong as a reward for her cooperation, and she will be safe. So Mr. Chou, from the Black House, will have no further business here in Meshed, when he learns that the General is dead. It will all be over. No more orders to Chou from the General. But I do not want to go on with the business. I do not wish to go on living like this. I want the dragon. For myself and for Wilma, who has suffered enough.”

  Durell felt a weariness that was not betrayed in the lines of his face. Cross and double cross, and motives within motives. It was almost standard, something always to be expected in this business.

  “When will the General be executed?” he asked.

  “Tonight or tomorrow. Perhaps it has happened already,” Freyda said. She seemed more confident now. She looked down at her body as she lay sprawled beneath him and held her bruised breasts in both hands. Somehow, even now, the gesture was provocative. She said, “I mentioned the ancient artist, Tung, whom the Deputy Chairman admires?”

  “He was a man who used brush and ink, shortly after the school of color painting flourished in the T’ang dynasty,” Durell said.

  She was pleased. “Ach, yes. You know of him! Tung was a wen-jen, a true gentleman-scholar. He did not believe in debating with himself over each movement of his brush; the art of painting in his day came from the heart, the spirit. Therefore it was mostly truthful and serene. Tung was a master of all the strokes of the brush, from the lute string to the twenty-one ts’un, the wrinkled texture, as it was called. He had the vital rhythm, the ch’i-yun; he captured the ch’i, the spirit of his subjects, to a delicate perfection. You see, the Deputy Chairman is an artist like Tung Ch’i-ch’ang. It is important to know such things about a man. He will be successful. The murder of the General, to end the Dragon plot, will come off to a perfection equal to Tung’s art. Then Wilma will be free to leave China. And Mr. Chou, from the Black House, will find himself at a loss here in Meshed, with no purpose, no mission, no superior to give him orders, and no reason to pursue the dragon further. Do you understand now, Durell? All the effort of the Chinese team, of which I am a part—or was—will go for nothing. It will all be erased, cancelled. Without the General, the Russians cannot provoke war. So the dragon is up for—how do you say it?—up for grabs.”

  He wondered if she was stalling for time. He had not needed the lecture on ancient Chinese artists. He had let Freyda go on with it, pondering the irony of what might be happening thousands of miles away in Peking, if she were telling the truth. And he considered how it affected his own assignment.

  “Bitte,” she said. “Please. I have told you the whole truth now. Let me up. Please."

  He released his weight on her warm body and got to his feet. The woman flexed her knees, rolled over, rested for a moment on all fours. She faced away from him. She did not seem to be conscious of her nudity. When she finally stood up, she leaned against a small, battered table in the comer that was part of the room’s primitive furnishings. Her hip went askew.

  “Then you will help me, Cajun? I have been utterly honest with you. Can I somehow buy the dragon from you? I have not too much money of course, but I have much information you can use, on networks and post office drops and radio relays. Oh, much, much data. Better still if you would join with me. We can share the profits. We can—”

  “No.”

  “You truly do not have the dragon?”

  “Put your clothes on, Freyda.”

  “You are not much of a man, after all,” she sneered. Then, all at once, she made her move. He had been right about her having concealed a weapon in the room, the knife with which she had first attacked him on the bed, but he had not given her credit for arranging another backstop. With surprising speed for such a large woman, she opened the drawer in the small table she leaned against and snatched up a small, nickel-plated .28 pistol she had hidden there. Crouching, she fired at him twice, holding the gun in both hands. Her face was contorted by hatred.

  The first slug went through the single window with a shattering crash of broken glass. The second bullet whipped past DurelPs throat with a hot, burning sensation. He gave her no time for a third effort. He dived hard at her, careless of the noise now, after the reckless shots she had fired. The whole hotel and neighborhood would be alerted and alarmed in minutes. He slammed her hard against the wall, saw the icy fury in her eyes, and hit her with his fist, saw blood spurt from her mouth, hit her again, caught the little pistol as she dropped it, and let her fall without ceremony to the floor in a naked heap.

  He took a deep breath, straightened, and found that he was trembling.

  Somebody shouted from the floor below. A piece of glass fell belatedly from the window frame. The garish movie lights on Pahlevi Avenue winked on and off.

  Turning, he opened the hotel room door with caution. The narrow, dimly lighted corridor was still deserted, but footsteps thudded upward from th
e lobby. He turned to the right, moved down the back steps. Each tread creaked an alarm as he ran lightly downward to the alley entrance. He already heard the far-off hooting of a police siren.

  People were craning over the edges of their roof terraces as he reached the alley floor. The smells here were noisome. A cat squealed and leaped away. Dogs barked. Lights were going on everywhere.

  He ran to the end of the alley, came out on the street, turned left, walked two blocks north into a better lighted avenue. A bus came rumbling along. He put up his hand and boarded it and rode away.

  12

  The neighborhood was one of imposing villas, some in European style, most in the hidden Moslem design of a high surrounding wall enclosing an inner courtyard. Heavily leafed trees made pools of quiet shadow from which he moved toward the single door in the wall facing the street. The house bulked high beyond the wall, with terraced roofs, some with planted gardens. A fountain tinkled somewhere within the grounds. Durell lifted the traditional hand of Fatima as a door-knocker and rapped twice, then twice again. It was only nine o’clock in the evening.

  He waited.

  He stood close against the wall beside the door and watched the street. No vehicles. No pedestrians. They were far from the center of town, northwest on the road going to Qushan. Beyond the little suburb stretched flat fields of fruit orchards and vegetables. The moon rode high in a hot, clear sky. Low hills, rising to an occasional high peak, lay to the east and west, and atop the peaks here and there were the dim outlines of ancient ruined fortresses dating far back to the devastating Uzbek invasions of the area.

  He knocked again.

  This time he heard bolts withdrawn, a small bell tinkled, and a voice asked in Farsi what he wanted at this hour.

  “Mr. E.K. Qam, please.”

  “Not here, sir.”

  “His brother, then. Mr. Nuri Qam.”

  “Never heard of him, sir.”

  “Tell him it’s Durell,” he said quietly.

  “Durell?”

  “Hurry.”